[Lonesome in Massachussets]

I find it hard to believe that if such a drone loses its link to the controller that it is not programmed to autonomously return to base. As a matter of fact, it would not be particularly hard to program the drone to execute the entire mission, regardless of jamming and to continue to transmit information back to base. The only capability you would lose is the ability of the operator to make real time adjustments, for whatever reason.

If the Iranians capability was truly “sophisticated” they would never have leaked a word about it, much less boasted. Boasting, evening when heavily cloaked with disinformation, gives the enemy far too much intelligence. If they had leaked the “feat” to the press, surrounded by a bodyguard of disinformation, it would have served their public relations and intelligence objectives far better.

Everything I've heard about this in the press makes me think the Iranians are definitely delighted by their luck, but they are exploiting it like total amateurs and the Western mainstream media is exhibiting its habitual dilettantism.

[BigBobber]

I too thought the Iranian response was strange. Why publicize the fact they have the drone, especially if it was brought down with jamming technology? They would get a brief public relations bump but reveal a lot about their capabilities.